Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Rob Hopkins Introduces New Yorkers to the Transition Movement

The Transition movement, a grassroots response to climate change, focuses
on local economic development.

By Dan Miner, www.BeyondOilNYC.org

In 2005 UK environmentalist Rob Hopkins created a unique organizing method to catalyze community level responses to
climate change, as he set up what would be the first Transition initiative in
the town of Totnes, England. Hopkins co-founded
the Transition Network in 2007 to train others in its application, and went on
to write three books about it: The
Transition Handbook, The Transition
Companion, and The Power of Just
Doing Stuff. Along the way he won
many awards, and earned a PhD from the University of Plymouth. In October 2013, Hopkins toured the US, visiting New Orleans, Boston, Portland Maine, NYC, Houston, Austin, San Francisco and Milwaukee.

Although
there are now 1,400 Transition initiatives in 44 countries, it's not because Hopkins has been spreading the word in person. He hasn't flown
since seeing "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006. But after seeing the 2013 documentary Chasing Ice, and the recent passing of carbon dioxide to over 400
parts per million in
the atmosphere, he decided he couldn't refuse an invitation to speak to US
funders about the power of local action to address our ecological and economic
crises. We had a rare and perhaps unique
opportunity to hear him in person when he spoke to a small group at NYC's
Municipal Arts Society.

Dan Miner, Rob Hopkins and John
Bell

Hopkins opened his presentation with a picture of a storefront in the village of Belcoo in County
Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Attendees
of the G8 economic summit drove through it en route to their conference center.
Like many retail spaces in Belcoo, it's
actually vacant - but was covered over with large stickers to make the area look occupied and prosperous.

From a distance, window stickers look like a thriving business.

"It reflects a
sense that while we feel things around us changing rapidly, as a culture we
find it easier to put stickers on windows and pretend everything is alright.However, many people want to do something
about it."Transition attempts to
respond to four challenges.

The
domination of big businesses over small businesses. Over the last fifty years or so there's been
an enormous transformation in how our economy works. A vast number of small businesses have been
displaced by a small number of very large businesses. In the UK, 97% of all fresh fruits and
vegetables are sold through 8,000 supermarkets.
Many studies have shown that the small local businesses which make up
the remaining 3% return much more of their income to their communities than the
big box stores and corporate chains.
However, most government economic development efforts concentrate on
stimulating big businesses, with support for small businesses a much lower
priority. Supporting local
businesses to make local economies more resilient was not only a central theme
of Hopkin's presentation but also a goal of Transition initiatives.

The
myth of endless growth.It's automatically
assumed that a healthy economy has to grow continuously. But wouldn't we be
upset if children or the plants in our backyards never stopped growing? So why
do we imagine that growth on a finite planet can go on indefinitely? The modest amount of economic growth we've
been seeing in the last few years has disproportionately gone to the very
wealthy, worsening income disparity while increasing carbon emissions.

Climate
change. The current science tells us that to put the brakes on climate change: we must leave 80% of the remaining fossil
fuels in the ground. While the safe
upper limit for further carbon emissions is only 565 gigatons, burning all of
the total available fossil fuel reserves would release 2,795 gigatons of carbon
into the atmosphere. Hopkins considers campaigns to get large pension fund and university investments out of fossil fuels and into sustainable enterprises to be very important.

Oil
dependency. Our assumption that we will always
have enough cheap energy to keep our society going has been based on smoke and
mirrors. Tar sands and fracking are literally scraping the barrel, because
we've run out of the cheap and easy oil.
In fact, our dependence on depleting supplies of oil is a great
vulnerability. The economic growth that we've come to value
can only continue as long as there is plentiful, easily accessible, cheap
energy. But what happens in case of
resource scarcity?

There's no cavalry coming to our
rescue, so even though national and international responses are needed, we
can't wait for them.While there's a lot
that can be done about these predicaments by individuals and through government
action, there's a great deal of untapped potential from mobilizing those around
us.What would a community response to
the end of the age of cheap energy look like?That vision is the missing element that Transition brings.It can lead to making what is now politically
impossible become the politically inevitable.
Transition initiatives are different in small towns, suburbs and major
metropolitan areas. They start with
organizers raising awareness about these challenges, finding allies and building
networks. Then, projects emerge
organically as participants find out what resonates with others in their
community.

Demonstration projects help people believe they can accomplish things with their
neighbors, and catalyze even more projects.
There's a network of people around the world who are doing this, acting
as social change R and D units. Successful and easily replicable ideas can be spread through the
networks.

The Transition Streets project offers a template and
workbook for several neighbors willing to get together every few weeks to make easy changes to how they use energy, water,
food, packaging and transportation.
Participants reduce their carbon emissions, but more importantly make
new local connections.

"The
future can be what we want it to be. We
are brilliant, imaginative and bold. But there are limits. Limits to the amount of carbon dioxide our
climate can handle, to the amount of energy available to us, and the degree to
which economic growth is still possible.
I believe we need to apply our brilliance to designing within those
limits, and we can do it. Around the
world, people are already seeing these limits as opportunities. They aren't waiting for permission, they're
coming together to create stronger and happier communities, more resilient and
viable economies, and taking their power back at the same time. It's the power of just doing stuff, and I
think it's one of the biggest ideas of our time. It's about getting on and doing stuff - here,
now, today. Visionary, practical, and meaningful
stuff. You can start small but
meaningful, and it can grow. In Kilburn,
London, a local group has created the first edible garden on top of an underground
station. In Slaithwaite, in Yorkshire, the community rescued the local greengrocer, creating a catalyst
for the economic regeneration of the town.
In Fujino, Japan, they created their
own electric company, which has since inspired another forty communities across
Japan to do the same thing. In Bristol,
in the southwest of England, they set up their own complementary currency, the Bristol pound, which can be spent
in hundreds of local independent businesses.
The city's mayor even takes his full salary in them. All of this can be done anywhere. When enough places do it, it starts to change
our sense of what's possible."
- Rob Hopkins, in a two minute video for the book "The Power of
Just Doing Stuff."

Transition movement organizers are cultivating a learning network, so people aren't always reinventing the wheel, with national hubs supporting local initiatives, providing groups the support, training and resources they need to be as effective as possible.

Local economic
development creates a virtuous circle. Local
businesses recognize natural limits, have low carbon outputs, build local
resilience, and are operated not just for profit but to bring assets into
community ownership. "The economies
of scale for local economy enterprises will be even more positive when oil is
$170 a barrel," Hopkins added.

While Transition provides the most comprehensive analysis and organizing
approach, many groups such as BALLE, Slow Food, and Slow
Money are working on the issue
of localizing business. Business
Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) provides an extensive
collection of resources, including reports, webinars, and manuals.
Transition UK's economic development strategy is to stimulate entrepreneurial
ventures in three areas: local food production, energy conservation retrofit
services and renewable energy generation. They have produced reports quantifying current and potential
spending in these sectors, as applied to a rural county, a small town and an
inner city London neighborhood, and outlining next steps.

Comparable reports have been prepared for the
NYC food system. Both Manhattan Borough
President Stringer’s FoodNYC report and Council Speaker Quinn’s FoodWorks Plan emphasized the economic benefits of
buying more of NYC's food needs from within NY State and the metropolitan
region.

"The new economy
in 20 enterprises" presents case studies of the
UK’s top twenty ‘Transition oriented’ social enterprises, chosen because they
meet basic needs of food, energy, transportation and housing, needed in
every locality. They show that viable business models - the building blocks for
a re-localized economy - already exist and are highly replicable, whether in
the UK or the US, concluded Hopkins. "You
don't need someone from England to come over and give you permission to do
Transition - but if you do, you just got it."

What is Transition?
"Transition is a community-led response to climate change and shrinking
supplies of cheap energy, building resilience and happiness. It is an idea
about the future, an optimistic, practical idea. It is self-organizing and
people-led, supporting the creation of communities that are more resilient,
entrepreneurial, connected, equitable and engaged. And it's fun." - Transition
Network

We are living in an age of unprecedented change, with
a number of crises converging. Climate change, global economic instability,
overpopulation, erosion of community, declining biodiversity, and resource
wars, have all stemmed from the availability of cheap, non-renewable fossil
fuels. Global oil, gas and coal production is predicted to irreversibly decline
in the next 10 to 20 years, and severe climate changes are already taking
effect around the world. The coming shocks are likely to be catastrophic if we
do not prepare.

In Rob's 2009 TED Talk, he explained that we have to transition beyond
fossil fuels not just because of climate change, but because the inexpensive
oil our civilization has been built to operate on is now steadily running
out. We can use our creativity to come
up with new ways to operate but it must be based on a realistic sense of where
we are. There are four stories we can adopt.
One is that we can keep on with business as usual. Another is that we'll hit the wall, and we're
so fragile everything will collapse. A
third is that technology can solve everything, and we'll just invent ourselves
ways out of these predicaments. The fourth - the transition response - raises
awareness about those challenges so they can be addressed directly, and
encourages self-organizing local projects.

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